Sunday, 15 May 2011

The arrest of the French IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn throws further euro rescue efforts into disarray:

Mr. Strauss-Kahn was arrested Saturday in New York for an alleged sexual assault of a maid in a Manhattan hotel, authorities said. According to a law enforcement official, Mr. Strauss-Kahn allegedly forced a cleaning woman onto his bed and sexually assaulted her at around 1 p.m. Saturday inside his room at the Sofitel Hotel near Times Square.

Mr. Strauss-Kahn, 62, was headed to Europe to discuss the worsening European debt crisis with top leaders there. He was scheduled to meet with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Sunday and financial ministers in the Euro Group on Monday and Tuesday.

Rising Star in French Cabinet Falls in a Corruption Inquiry

Last week, the Paris prosecutor's office gave a green light for an investigation of Mr. Strauss-Kahn for fraud in his role as a lawyer in a property deal in the mid-1990's.

According to several newspaper reports, the investigation centers on accusations that Mr. Strauss-Kahn, 50, was paid about $100,000 for the deal but did no work. There are also accusations that documents were forged to justify the payments.

In October 2008, Strauss-Kahn issued an apology to the IMF staff after accusations that he had a sexual relationship with an IMF subordinate. "While this incident constituted an error in judgment on my part, for which I take full responsibility, I firmly believe that I have not abused my position," Strauss-Kahn wrote in an email to IMF staff.

"Like all great political animals, he has trouble controlling himself," says the writer, who has produced Les secrets d'un présidentiable (Secrets of a Presidential Contender) under the pseudonym, Cassandre. She describes Strauss-Kahn - or DSK as the high-profile Socialist politician is known to the French media - as "always on the hunt".

When he enters a room, whether a café and office or a private place, the ritual is always the same, she says. He surveys the room for attractive women and having spotted his prey, bombards them with text messages, usually with the opener: "I want you".

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Given the evidence of some women who spoke to the writer for her book, this is very possible.

One of them, a novelist called Tristane Banon, claims she had to fight DSK off with kicks and punches when he invited her to a meeting, while the actress Danielle Evenou said: "Who hasn't been cornered by Dominique Strauss-Kahn?"

PS

It has also been widely believed that Strass-Kahn had ambitions to run in the coming French presidential elections. It can now be said with certainty that the French socialist party has to find another candidate. And it also obvious that IMF will have to find a new chief. This time Mr. Strauss-Kahn´s influential European friends will not be able to rescue him.

The end of Strauss-Kahn´s international activities will be an additional bonus for climate change realists, too. After all, he was the person who introduced the stupid idea of a 100 billion dollar "Greend fund" money transfer to developing countries:

"IMF staff is working on the idea of a “Green Fund” with the capacity to raise $100 billion a year by 2020"

"Much of this financing should come as grants or highly-concessional loans. For this, we need subsidies. Ultimately, these will have to come as budgetary transfers from developed countries, drawing on scaled-up carbon taxes and expanded carbon trading mechanisms. But these new revenue sources will take time to put in place. So we need an interim solution. A “Green Fund” could provide a mechanism that could act as a bridge to large-scale carbon-based financing in the medium term. And IMF quotas could provide a key for burden sharing, to help overcome one of the obstacles to an agreement."